Were boys in the ancient Roman army?

Answer 1

ancient Rome covered a lot of time - about 700 years. So things changed and it depended on the time and place. One well documented period was the war with Carthage. Hannibal defeated the Roman army and swept down on Rome. In desperation, the Romans allowed old men, criminals, slaves, and boys to join up. We know that Scipio Africanus, as a centurion, was training 12 year old boys to ride horses and act as couriers and guerrilla soldiers. He was with his father's army as a 14 year old. Was he actually in the army? He rescued his father at the battle of heraculem when he was 16. Size mattered. He was a big boy, even for a Roman. During the empire, a boy had to be 16 to join and be 1.7 metres in height. An archeological dig unearthed soldiers whose height averaged 5'2" so it was possible that they were boys, not fully grown men. There are incidences of armies of dwarf gladiator fighting to death in the arena and being buried in pits, but dwarfs are very rare, so the dwarfs were probably boys.